Athlon Versions Part II

[vagabond]

This post is just to expound on my previous post "Athlon Versions". Also thanks to those who gave advice.

Let me recap a bit. I bought not knowing the "C" version of the Athlon and at the time I had the DFI AK-74EC w/an FSB of 100Mhz. I didn't want to underclock the CPU so what I did is I invested instead on a motherboard. Because I'm a little bit thin on the wallet I decided after exhaustive research (it did pretty well on Tom's article: <A HREF="http://link" target="_new">http://www17.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20010924/</A>)actually I had two choices, the AsRock K7VT2 or the ECS K7S5A. I went w/ the ECS. I know the VIA chipset is better than the SiS but there were three reasons that made me decide to get the ECS. 1)Onboard LAN 2) SD/DDR Slots(AsRock had also) 3)I got the mobo free.

For its specifications, it works well with my Athlon 1.0C. Contrary to what I've read (not just Tom's articles) it works well at 133/133 w/ no-name SDRAM. Got 512MB PC 133 and it's running fine. I did read somewhere that if you add RAM to the second slot that it can become unstable. Got a 300W PSU from CODEGEN. I'll eventually upgrade it to DDR-RAM.


<b><font color=blue>veni,vidi, and ended up in THGC<font color=blue></b>

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Good for you man!

As far as the VIA Chipset being better..that is not true..the SiS 735 is better....and the SIS 745 is even better than that.....

the ECS Board K7S5A more precisely is not a bad board at all...that is...if u get a good one =)

I also had one...never had a problem with it.....the only thing is it has no BIOS tweaking features......like FSB or VOLTAGE or Multiplier.....oh well....its still good......Im glad u got a good working computer now though =)

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[vagabond]

I guess I did get lucky w/ this board. Come to think of it, ever since my first Intel board I've only had DFI boards so this is my first hop into other motherboards. The first time away from VIA chipsets. I didn't know it performed better than VIA or AMD. It being an integrated North/South chipset and all. Before I got it, it was running a 900Duron w/128MB PC 133(single-stick) fine. According to my research, this board can use PC 1600 and PC 2100 DDR-RAM. What is that in actual FSB? If I'm not mistaken 1600 and 2100 stands for the RAM's bandwidth doesn't it? Wait a minute...OK figured it out. 1600 is 100Mhz (DDR200) & 2100 is 133Mhz (DDR266). I have read that this board is real picky w/DDR-RAM so I'll really have to invest when I upgrade to DDR. I'll probably get the highest possible AthlonXP it can handle. If I can afford it.

Not too much worried about the FSB or Vcore or Multiplier. I'm just happy it's running its true FSB. SETI is just rambling along. What my old board/CPU used to finish in ca. 26hours per WU I'm now doing in a little over 9hours. Not a bad SETI benchmark. :tongue:

Thanks for the feedback, MeTaL RoCkEr.

Vagabond

<b><font color=blue>veni,vidi, and ended up in THGC<font color=blue></b>